The Highland Falcon Thief

by M. G. Leonard

  ‘Mr Bradshaw –’ the prince extended his hand – ‘it’s a pleasure to meet you. My father is a huge admirer of railways. Your books are in all our libraries.’

  ‘Is it exciting riding the Highland Falcon?’ the princess said to Hal. ‘I can’t wait to climb aboard.’

  Hal nodded, finding himself tongue-tied and unable to keep from staring at the enormous diamond dangling from her neck.

  Uncle Nat nudged him gently. ‘Shake the prince’s hand, Hal.’

  The prince smiled. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Master Beck, but your clothes look familiar.’

  Hal blushed as the prince shook his hand.

  The prince winked. ‘Bet they’re itchy.’

  Hal’s mouth dropped open as Uncle Nat ushered him through the porch. He looked over his shoulder and saw the prince offer his hand to Ernest White and then embrace him like a friend.

  ‘Oh my days, she’s wearing the Atlas Diamond!’ Lydia Pickle whispered loudly to her husband. ‘That necklace is mint.’

  ‘Don’t go getting any ideas,’ Steven Pickle grunted. ‘Just the cost of getting that rock insured would be enough to give me a heart attack.’

  Looking ahead for Milo, Hal realized with a horrible shock that he couldn’t see the Baron’s son. He ducked under elbows and scanned the corridors, but there was no sign of him. He cursed himself for getting distracted. Lenny would not be impressed.

  The housekeeper, a kind-looking woman with neatly pinned-back grey curls, ushered the group into a wood-panelled room as big as a village hall. It was carpeted with tartan rugs, and the heads of great stags were mounted on shields on the wall. The Pickles stood in the middle of the room loudly estimating the value of everything as waiters with trays handed out drinks. Sierra reclined on a chaise longue while Lucy sat awkwardly on a footstool at her feet. The baron was stood before an enormous portrait of King Edward VII, but Milo Essenbach was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Would the young gentleman like a glass of orange juice?’

  Hal nodded at the housekeeper. ‘Yes, please.’

  She turned to Uncle Nat. ‘I’m Gladys, sir.’ She bobbed her head. ‘Considering the lunch will be formal, we thought your nephew might prefer to eat in the kitchen with the other children?’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Uncle Nat, looking at Hal. ‘Might be less stuffy and more fun. What do you think?’

  ‘Um … uh …’ Hal desperately tried to think of a good reason to stay. He needed to watch Milo, if the man ever returned. ‘But I like grown-ups.’

  Uncle Nat laughed. ‘Of course you do. Gladys, my nephew is being polite. He’d love to spend some time with people his own age. He’s been trying to find someone to play with since we left King’s Cross, but sadly there are no other children on the train.’ He looked at Hal. ‘Go and enjoy yourself.’

  ‘But—’

  Before he could protest, Gladys took a firm hold of Hal’s hand and marched him out of the room.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BELOW STAIRS

  As Hal descended a narrow flight of stone steps, the warm smell of baking bread greeted him. Gladys led him into a cavernous steam-filled kitchen with a range of stoves along one wall. Copper and silver pots and pans hung from ceiling hooks. A giant oak table in the middle of the floor was set with four places. A thick-set boy who seemed about Hal’s age was lowering a ladle into a pot bubbling away on the hob.

  ‘Ivan!’ Gladys snapped. ‘Get away from there. It’s hot!’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Ivan complained, turning around and spotting Hal. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘This is Harrison Beck. He’s joining us for lunch today.’ Gladys pointed to two large sinks at the end of the kitchen. ‘You can wash your hands there, Harrison. Ivan, come and sit back at the table. Honestly, I can’t leave you for a second.’

  ‘Nice bow tie,’ Ivan said with a disparaging snort.

  Just then, a young girl ran in, wailing. Her pink satin dress was splattered with mud, and her carrot-coloured ponytail dishevelled.

  ‘Melly! What has happened to you?’ Gladys grabbed a cloth and rushed over to the girl.

  ‘Oh, Gladys!’ Melly sobbed. ‘I was coming through the flower garden, and a pack of white dogs attacked me.’

  ‘Attacked you?’ Gladys said, aghast. ‘Did they hurt you? Did they bite you?’ She turned the girl around, looking for injuries.

  Melly sniffed. ‘They knocked me over and licked me!’

  ‘They wouldn’t hurt you,’ Hal said, drying his hands. ‘They’re friendly dogs – just puppies, really.’

  Melly scowled at him. ‘Are they your dogs?’

  ‘No.’ Hal took a seat at the table. ‘They belong to Lady Lansbury, but I met them on the Highland Falcon.’

  ‘Melly.’ Gladys’s voice was stern as she took the girl by the shoulders. ‘What’s that I can smell? Have you been in the princess’s room again?’

  ‘No.’ Melly’s blue eyes grew wide. She was obviously lying.

  ‘How many times have I told you not to play with her things?’

  Melly’s bottom lip trembled. ‘I just did a tiny squirt of her perfume.’

  ‘If I find out you’ve been going into her room without permission,’ Gladys said, steering Melly towards the table, ‘I’m going to tell your mother.’

  ‘So, you’ve been riding on the Highland Falcon?’ Ivan said, turning to Hal and grabbing a roll from a basket in the centre of the table.

  Hal nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s the most incredible train—’

  ‘Only nerds like trains,’ Ivan interrupted flatly.

  ‘If you’d seen the royal train, you wouldn’t be saying that,’ Gladys scolded, placing a casserole dish on the table. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She picked up the ladle. ‘Now, who wants some of Cook’s sausage and apple casserole with mashed tatty?’

  They all nodded, and she began to fill their plates.

  ‘Ivan, will you look after Harrison?’ Gladys wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘I have to pop upstairs to help with the lunch service.’

  Ivan burped loudly and grinned nastily at Hal. ‘Yes, Gladys,’ he said sweetly.

  ‘I shan’t be long.’ As she bustled out of the kitchen, she called over her shoulder, ‘There’s trifle in the fridge for afters.’

  There was an awkward silence. Ivan began to slurp up his casserole loudly. Melly looked at him with disgust.

  ‘It must be pretty cool, living in a castle,’ Hal said.

  ‘It is,’ Ivan replied. ‘My dad’s the head butler. He’s the boss of this place. I can go wherever I want. Nobody tells me what to do.’

  ‘He isn’t the boss,’ Melly scoffed.

  ‘I know places in this castle even my dad doesn’t know about,’ Ivan boasted. ‘I have a map of the secret passages. Sometimes, I spy on the Queen.’

  ‘No, you don’t!’ Melly rolled her eyes and looked at Hal. ‘My mother is a lady-in-waiting. No one spies on the Queen, and there are no secret passages.’

  ‘Are too.’

  ‘Could you show me?’ Hal said, suddenly getting an idea. ‘I’d like to see.’

  Ivan ignored Hal. ‘Who’s for trifle?’ He pushed his chair back from the table and walked over to the fridge, taking out a dessert bowl. He brought it back and spooned out an enormous portion for himself.

  ‘Seriously, if it’s true, you can go anywhere you want,’ Hal said, seizing his chance. ‘Why don’t you prove it?’

  Ivan raised an eyebrow, filling his mouth with jelly and custard. ‘What if I don’t want to?’ he mumbled.

  Hal smiled. ‘Then I’ll know you’re talking rubbish,’ he said, crossing his arms.

  ‘C’mon, then,’ Ivan said, pushing his chair back. ‘You’ll see.’

  Hal followed Ivan upstairs. They walked down a corridor lined with paintings of Scottish mountains, and Hal caught the murmur of voices and the clinking of crockery. He wanted a peep at the grown-ups eating their lunch. He had to know whether Milo was with them. But before they reached
the dining room, a smartly dressed attendant stepped out from a doorway and held up his hand.

  ‘Ivan,’ he said sternly, ‘what’re you doing here?’

  ‘Hi, Alec,’ Ivan replied brightly. ‘I’m showing Harrison around the castle.’

  Alec gave Ivan a suspicious look. ‘Aye, and what else might you be up to? We both know what kind of trouble you like tae get into.’

  ‘Harrison said he wanted a tour of the castle, and seeing how he’s a guest, I’m giving him one.’ Ivan’s face was a picture of innocence.

  ‘Well, take a wee tour in the other direction –’ Alec twirled a white-gloved finger – ‘because I’ll not be letting you anywhere near the royal party.’

  ‘Fine,’ Ivan replied, spinning on his heel. ‘C’mon,’ he said to Hal. ‘We’ll go this way.’

  They passed through a door into a room that looked out over a garden of box hedges.

  ‘Thought you could go wherever you wanted?’ Hal couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘Shut it.’

  ‘So, where are these secret passages, then?’

  ‘There’s one over here.’ Ivan walked over to a window, dragging a tall-backed chair with him. ‘Come see.’

  Curious, Hal followed him.

  ‘Get up on the chair and run your hand along the top of the window,’ Ivan said.

  Hal climbed up and had to rise on to his toes to reach the top of the window.

  ‘There’s a lever,’ Ivan said. ‘Can you feel it?’

  Hal strained to stand as tall as possible and felt along the wooden frame with his fingertips, but he couldn’t find anything. He heard a clunk, then felt a hand shove him hard. He fell forward, out through the now open window. He landed face first in a flower bed, his chin sinking into cold, damp earth. He spat out soil. Suddenly from above there was a loud bang. Hal looked up. Ivan had shut the window and was waving and grinning down at him.

  Getting to his feet, Hal tried to look as if being shoved out of a window hadn’t hurt. He put his hands in his pockets and strolled off, trying not to limp. His knees were wet with mud from the flower bed. For the first time since he’d put it on, he was glad of the itchy blazer. He sank his chin down and hugged his arms against his sides to stop from shivering. The wind was cold. Hurrying around the corner, Hal searched for a way back into the castle. A gust of wind brought him the bombastic bass of Mr Pickle’s voice, and there was Sierra’s tinkling laugh. Ahead of him, a bay window glowed yellow. The condensation on the inside of the glass had prompted someone to open the top casements.

  Hal snuck up and stepped into the flower bed, peeping into the dining room. It wasn’t as grand as he’d imagined. He saw a granite fireplace, and above it an enormous mirror stretching up to a crenellated cornice. The prince sat at one end of the dining table, sandwiched between Lady Lansbury and Lydia Pickle. The princess was at the other end, sat between Uncle Nat and Milo Essenbach. Hal was relieved to see the Atlas Diamond still hung about her neck, although he was alarmed that Milo had managed to get himself a seat right next to it.

  Pulling out his sketchbook, he drew the table, marking where each person was sitting.

  A man, who Hal assumed could only be Ivan’s father, dressed in black and looking every bit as disagreeable as his son, was stood by a mahogany cabinet surveying the room and making silent but aggressive gestures to the serving staff. Hal immediately realized no one would be able to steal the princess’s necklace under his watchful eye.

  ‘That’s the trouble with these old castles and country houses,’ Steven Pickle was saying to the baron. ‘Expensive to run. There’s the maintenance and the staff, and I don’t want to even think about the insurance. Sheesh!’

  Ernest White seemed very uncomfortable to have found himself sat at a royal table and kept trying to help the waiting staff. At the other end of the table, the princess was teasing Milo about being a bachelor.

  ‘You can’t put off marriage forever.’

  Sierra giggled. ‘I keep telling him that.’

  Milo smiled awkwardly. Hal focused on Milo’s face, flipped the page, and drew the snarling lip and angry forehead lines that pinched his dark eyes together. He looked every bit the criminal.

  Meanwhile, Lady Lansbury was talking to the prince about horses, and he was nodding, but Hal noticed his eyes flicker to the end of the table every few seconds to look at his beautiful wife.

  Hal turned another page, and his pen darted across the paper, getting down the lines of Lady Lansbury’s profile and the distracted face of the prince – more impressions than actual drawings.

  A sudden pain stung the back of his head. Hal looked about trying to work out what had hurt him. Was it a wasp or a bee? He felt another hot shock of pain on his wrist, and then another on his cheek.

  On the ground, he saw a ball of chewed-up paper. And then a hail of them began to hit him in quick succession. He shrank back against the wall and looked up. There, up in a turret, he saw Ivan, leaning out of a window with a straw.

  ‘Nerd!’ he shouted.

  Cursing Ivan under his breath, Hal leaped on to the path and jogged away as spots of rain hit him. There was a red mark on the back of his wrist where Ivan had shot a pellet at him. He shoved his sketchbook into his blazer pocket and broke into a sprint as the rain got heavier. He turned a corner, then another and another. In the distance, he could see the porch where they had entered Balmoral.

  Lifting the iron ring, Hal was relieved to find that the porch door opened. He stepped inside and shook himself like a dog. He was soaked. Looking down, he saw his knees and shins were caked in mud. A raindrop dripped off the end of his nose. He looked about for something to use as a cloth … and there it was: Milo Essenbach’s graphite-grey woollen coat – the one he’d been wearing earlier when Hal had seen him stuff that mysterious piece of paper into his pocket.

  It was hanging right in front of him on the wall-mounted coat rack.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SECRETS AND SCONES

  Going through someone’s pockets was wrong. But so was stealing jewels. What if the brooch and earrings were in those pockets? Hal took a deep breath and plunged his hands into them. His left hand pulled out a packet of tissues. His right, a crumpled piece of paper. He unfurled the note.

  Milo had an accomplice! Pulling out his sketchbook, Hal hurriedly copied down the note to show Lenny. The Magpie was not one person, but two! One for sorrow, two for joy ….

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Gahhhhh!’ Hal yelled, dropping his pen as he spun around.

  Melly was standing a metre away, watching him.

  ‘What am I doing?’ he almost shouted. ‘What are you doing creeping up on me? You frightened me half to death!’

  ‘I came to find you. I thought Ivan might have played one of his mean tricks.’

  ‘He did,’ Hal said, bending down to pick up his pen. ‘He shoved me out of a window and shot pellets of paper at me.’ He pointed to the welt on his wrist. ‘I’m covered in mud and soaked through.’

  ‘Could’ve been worse,’ Melly said with a half-smile. ‘He locked my cousin in the pig shed. The pigs thought she was food.’ She moved towards Hal, trying to look at his sketchbook. ‘What were you doing going through the pockets of that coat?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said, snapping his book shut. ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘I’m seven and a half.’ She cocked her head. ‘And you looked like you were stealing.’

  ‘I wasn’t! Look – if I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else.’

  Melly nodded. ‘Promise.’

  ‘I was doing detective work.’ Hal crumpled the note up, dropping it back into Milo’s coat pocket. ‘Very important, secret detective work.’

  ‘Detecting what?’ She was suddenly so close, she was almost stepping on his toes. ‘You can trust me. A lady-in-waiting has to be good at keeping secrets.’

  ‘A lady-in-waiting?’

  ‘That’s what I’m going to be when I grow up, like my mum.�
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  ‘Right.’ Hal smiled. ‘I bet you’ll be brilliant at it.’

  ‘You’re nice.’ Melly beamed. ‘I can help you with your detecting if you like. What’s the crime?’

  ‘It hasn’t happened yet, but we think one of the guests on the train plans to steal the princess’s diamond necklace.’

  ‘The Atlas Diamond?’ Melly shook her head, her ponytail flicking from side to side. ‘That’s impossible. The princess has a guard who watches the necklace the whole time she’s wearing it. His name is Hadrian, and he’s ginormous, like a giant.’

  ‘What about when she takes it off?’

  ‘She puts the Atlas Diamond in a special metal case with a number lock and gives the case to Hadrian. He handcuffs it to his wrist—’

  ‘There you are, Hal!’ Gladys sang out, clapping her hands together as she rushed towards them. ‘It’s time to get you back to that train, young man. Thank you, Melly, for er …’ She looked quizzically at Hal’s muddy trousers. ‘Looking after our guest.’

  ‘That’s OK. Bye, Harrison.’ Melly hugged him, whispering, ‘I hope you solve the case.’

  Hal hugged her back. ‘Bye, Melly … and thank you.’

  ‘What on earth have you been up to?’ Uncle Nat exclaimed, staring at Hal as he came down the hallway. ‘You look like a rat that went for a swim in a hippopotamus’s hollow.’

  ‘Um, well, you see, um …’

  ‘Let me guess, you’ve been nowhere, getting up to nothing?’ Uncle Nat’s eyes twinkled.

  Hal grinned. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘You can fill me in when we’re back on the train.’

  Hal nodded gratefully and moved towards the door, but his uncle put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We leave the premises in order of social standing.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘We go last because we don’t have a title. We’re nobodies, remember?’ Uncle Nat waggled his eyebrows.

  The prince and princess walked outside through the door, followed by Lady Lansbury on the arm of the baron, then Milo Essenbach. The black cars were lined up on the gravel. There were six now. Standing beside the princes’ vehicle was the biggest man Hal had ever seen. He had shoulders like a bison and was a head taller than the other men. Hadrian, Hal thought.